Pakistan

Basic Democracies

Ayub Khan's martial law regime, critics observed, was a
form
of "representational dictatorship," but the new political
system,
introduced in 1959 as "Basic Democracy," was an apt
expression of
what Ayub Khan called the particular "genius" of Pakistan.
In
1962 a new constitution was promulgated as a product of
that
indirect elective system. Ayub Khan did not believe that a
sophisticated parliamentary democracy was suitable for
Pakistan.
Instead, the Basic Democracies, as the individual
administrative
units were called, were intended to initiate and educate a
largely illiterate population in the working of government
by
giving them limited representation and associating them
with
decision making at a "level commensurate with their
ability."
Basic Democracies were concerned with no more than local
government and rural development. They were meant to
provide a
two-way channel of communication between the Ayub Khan
regime and
the common people and allow social change to move slowly.

The Basic Democracies system set up five tiers of
institutions. The lowest but most important tier was
composed of
union councils, one each for groups of villages having an
approximate total population of 10,000. Each union council
comprised ten directly elected members and five appointed
members, all called Basic Democrats. Union councils were
responsible for local agricultural and community
development and
for rural law and order maintenance; they were empowered
to
impose local taxes for local projects. These powers,
however,
were more than balanced at the local level by the fact
that the
controlling authority for the union councils was the
deputy
commissioner, whose high status and traditionally
paternalistic
attitudes often elicited obedient cooperation rather than
demands.

The next tier consisted of the tehsil
(subdistrict)
councils, which performed coordination functions. Above
them, the
district (zilla) councils, chaired by the deputy
commissioners, were composed of nominated official and
nonofficial members, including the chairmen of union
councils.
The district councils were assigned both compulsory and
optional
functions pertaining to education, sanitation, local
culture, and
social welfare. Above them, the divisional advisory
councils
coordinated the activities with representatives of
government
departments. The highest tier consisted of one development
advisory council for each province, chaired by the
governor and
appointed by the president. The urban areas had a similar
arrangement, under which the smaller union councils were
grouped
together into municipal committees to perform similar
duties. In
1960 the elected members of the union councils voted to
confirm
Ayub Khan's presidency, and under the 1962 constitution
they
formed an electoral college to elect the president, the
National
Assembly, and the provincial assemblies.

The system of Basic Democracies did not have time to
take
root or to fulfill Ayub Khan's intentions before he and
the
system fell in 1969. Whether or not a new class of
political
leaders equipped with some administrative experience could
have
emerged to replace those trained in British constitutional
law
was never discovered. And the system did not provide for
the
mobilization of the rural population around institutions
of
national integration. Its emphasis was on economic
development
and social welfare alone. The authority of the civil
service was
augmented in the Basic Democracies, and the power of the
landlords and the big industrialists in the West Wing went
unchallenged.